****** spittle drips from your lips
where once I tasted the proclivity
for hand rolled cigarettes and whiskey;
my saviour incarnate in a stranger’s fist.


I wear your words like welts upon my back,
five lashes, unseen by the eye yet palpable.
Lesions I pick, agape and weeping
like the feeble mouths of infants screaming. 


This was never mine to mourn.
I’m licking your wounds now, your finger in my own;
and back to you again I’m bourne.

The agony of your absence arrests me.
A wave that consumes. I cannot clutch-
you simply slip straight through my fingers.

I’m thirsty yet drowning as it washes the wounds
which you licked clean for a time; but no more.

That's quite a shame about your personality.
I'd otherwise have liked to
shrink myself
and curl up in the nook
under the arch
of your alabaster cheekbone.

Wednesday 18th:
Should I be working?
University at 25 seems
so redundant when I stare
at the soft skinned babes,
who skirt the car park
in drunken bliss.

Should I quit?
Get a job? Maybe retail or
office work.
Some say I could seek stability
between the pages of spreadsheets,
sipping coffee with Susan on the
9-5.

Should I marry?
Set a date? They're all engaged.
Stones glaring back at me
like Polydectes eyes
from Facebook pages.
25 is the 'right age',
or so I've been told.

Should I?
I suppose I could.
Maybe I should. Or I could
perhaps
just do something else.

My days are engulfed by ennui
that I cannot eradicate.
As though I were buried alive
and the undertakings of my
past,
my vices
my sins
my failures
enervate me.
Smother me. Weigh down on
me
like so much dirt.